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1
Safer City Program – Chilliwack Experience
Roderick Sanderson
Manager of Transportation & Drainage
City of Chilliwack, B.C.
Paper prepared for presentation
at the “How to Encourage the Safe Co-existence
of Different Modes of Transportation” of
the 2011 Annual Conference of the
Transportation Association of Canada
Edmonton, Alberta
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Introduction
The City of Chilliwack, British Columbia is a community of approximately 80,000 people,
located 100 kilometers east of the City of Vancouver.
In the spring of 2003 the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia sponsored the Safer City
initiative in an attempt to reduce vehicle accidents.
The Insurance Corporation of BC convinced the City of the benefits of the Safer City Program as
a systematic and comprehensive approach to promoting road safety within a community. This
program would depend on a collaborative effort from City officials, RCMP officers and ICBC
experts.
Objective
The City of Chilliwack experience approximately 4,000 vehicle related traffic accidents per year,
the primary focus of this program is to systematically reduce the number of accidents.
The Safer City initiative will focus primarily on the public road network (excluding private
property) and concentrate on accident reduction. Achieving this objective will require the
development of partnerships and programs involving the City of Chilliwack as road owner, the
RCMP officers in the Traffic Section as the enforcement element and the Insurance Corporation
of BC as program sponsor and primary safety issue communicator.
By utilizing the 3 E’s of engineering, enforcement and education, the Safer City initiative will
strive to integrate the 3 E’s for maximum effect. The original Safer City initiative included 5
stages, described below in table 1, which had a proposed implementation period of 3 years.
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Partnerships
At the core of Safer City is partnerships that strive to improve linkages, communications and
cooperation. The primary partnership arrangement is with ICBC, the City of Chilliwack and the
Chilliwack Detachment of the RCMP.
In addition there are secondary partnerships that are formed between the primary group (City,
ICBC, and RCMP) and other effective and influential groups in our community, including:
• University of Fraser Valley
• Chilliwack Junior Hockey Association
• Insurance Retailers
• Citizen volunteers from Speed Watch, Neighbourhood Watch, Citizens on Patrol.
Partnerships are utilized to encourage participation and maintain focus on the primary objective
of vehicle accident reduction.
The partnerships were formalized with the signing of the Safer City Alliance documents at
program launching media events in 2004. Formalizing the partnership assists in maintaining the
commitment necessary to ensure program success.
Programs
The Safer City Initiative is effective when partnership staff (City, RCMP & ICBC) and
community volunteers work together through regularized programs. The City of Chilliwack
Safer City Initiative has adopted, and is implementing a number of the standard programs offered
by generic Safer City literature. Table 2 illustrates the current active programs under the
Chilliwack Safer City banner.
Table 2
# Program Name
1 Three Strikes Campaign
2 Safer School Travel
3 Earned Media
4 Hey Neighbour Please Slow Down
5 Speed Watch
6 Weekly Partner Reporting
In the following sections, the programs listed in Table 2 will be described in brief.
Three Strikes Campaign
Goal: To control vehicle speed on major arterial and collector roads in the community.
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Method: The three strikes campaign uses three communication tools to effect driver behavior
change to drive within the posted speed limit. The first strike is a standard regulatory speed sign
(50 or 60 kph in Chilliwack). The second strike some 100 meters downstream is the portable
speed reader board operated by Speed Watch volunteers. The third strike, again some distance
downstream, is a RCMP team equipped with speed enforcement equipment (radar or laser).
The packaging of a regulatory speed sign, volunteer Speed Watch personnel with a speed reader
board and an RCMP member conducting speed enforcements is intended to increase the impact
on the driver. This program also raises the profile of the Speed Watch volunteers, as motorists
are not always sure when they are packaged with RCMP enforcement support.
Safer School Travel
Goal: To improve the safety of the daily trips to and from elementary schools within our
community (20 elementary schools in Chilliwack) by identifying impediments to walking and
cycling and by identifying vehicle parking and circulation improvements on school grounds.
Method: Staff from the City, RCMP and ICBC work with school principals and parent
volunteers to identify routes to school, infrastructure deficiencies and school travel safety issues.
Solutions are identified utilizing a team approach, followed by improvement programming by
partnering agencies.
Photograph 1
Strike 1 of Three Strikes
Campaign 2011
Central Elementary
Community School; Safer
School Travel Road Safety
Plan - 2007
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Earned Media
Goal: Work with television, radio and print media companies to raise the profile of road safety
within Chilliwack.
Method: Staff from the City, RCMP and ICBC work with local media companies to express the
road safety message into the community. Examples include televised community programming
highlighting topics such as “Back to School”, “Winter Driving” and “Intersection Safety”.
Hey Neighbour Please Slow Down
Goal: To control vehicle speed on local residential streets in the community.
Method: The City lends temporary lawn signs to neighbourhood volunteer captains who arrange
for installation in lawns in speed plagued neighbourhoods. Signs intend to remind thoughtless
motorists that their speeding affects friends and neighbours.
Speed Watch
Goal: To control vehicle speed on major arterial and collector roads in the community.
Method: City, RCMP and ICBC support and encourage Speed Watch volunteer program
utilizing portable speed reader board at various trouble spots throughout our road network. In
addition to speed reader board messaging on site volunteers can record the license plate details of
problem speeders who can be contacted for educational purposes.
Hey Neighbour Please Slow
Down campaign signs on
Tilston Street - 2008
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Weekly Partner Reporting
Goal: To communicate weekly public input about road safety issues to Safer City Partners in an
end of week report.
Method: Assemble and report out to RCMP and ICBC each weeks public issues regarding road
safety. Report is used to target educational messaging and enforcement resources.
Speed Watch volunteers on
Yale Road East 2011
Weekly Partner Report
February 2011
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Projects
In addition to regularized programs, the Safer City umbrella includes regular and individual
projects. The projects completed to date are listed below in Table 3.
Table 3
Project Frequency
Safer City Annual Report Annual
Integrated Corridor Projects Annual/As Required
Speed Surveys As Required
Road Classification Update Every 5 Years
Safety Audit Policy/Bylaw Individual
The following sections describe in summary, the projects listed in Table 3.
Safer City Annual Report
Safer City staff prepare an annual report summarizing the achievements of the year. The report
includes vehicle accident data statistics, project reports and updated status reports on program
activities.
Safer City Annual Report - 2008
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Integrated Corridor Project
Integrated corridor projects have been completed annually on the City’s highest accident arterial
road corridor. The project integrates efforts of engineering, education and enforcement for a
focused one month period to reduce collisions. Projects have produced significant accident
reduction results for the one month, the 2008 corridor projects resulted in a two thirds accident
reduction for the month (May, 2008).
Speed Surveys
Periodically Safer City will initiate a speed survey to gather driver behavior information in
relation to a problem area, or, as in the case of the annual integrated corridor project, speed data
is gathered before, during and after the project period. The data assists in evaluating the
performance of various engineering, enforcement and educational tools.
Road Classification Update
Classification of the road network is a common tool for road authorities which aid staff in
operation and management activities. In 2006 the City embarked upon a review of our 20 year
old classification system; the review was intended to emphasize the element of safety in the
consideration of road classification.
Success
Public contact and interaction is a large component of the work done by our City Engineering
Department, our Safer City Initiative has improved our contact performance with the public. The
creation of a Public Safety Specialist employee position to operate and manage all the projects
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and programs of Safer City has helped to bundle the safety related customer service duties. As a
result our customer contact performance has improved, through the systemization of the
programs.
Of all the programs under the Safer City umbrella, the Safer School Travel program has
generated the single largest benefit for City Engineering Staff. Through this program the
volunteer parents are guided through a documented series of steps and activities which result in
concrete action, all reported in the final document, a document the volunteers write.
The Safer School Travel Program has long lasting effects which appear to transfer down to the
parents of the younger students entering the school each year.
The Safer City initiative owes all of its success to the partnership between the City, RCMP and
ICBC. Like most partnerships, this one only works if sufficient time is invested in nurturing the
partnership and finding ways to meet all the partner needs.
New Programs
Through public interaction and colleague communication our Safer City Program list is always
under review. The following is a description of several new programs we are implementing in
2011.
Pace Car Program
A volunteer driver program intended to create a percentage of vehicles though out the
community travelling at the posted speed. With enough volunteer involvement this program
could reduce the average speeds on major arterial roads in our network.
Road Safety Solutions Team
In an ongoing effort to institutionalize road safety, our Public Safety Specialist has launched a
Road Safety Solutions Team to engage staff from each of the Partnership organizations. This
team approach provides a brainstorm session for open discussion about safety issues and possible
solutions.
Conclusion
The Safer City initiative as a whole has been successful and valuable for each of the primary
partners, City, ICBC and RCMP providing a public communication and feedback platform
focused on public road safety.
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The Safer City initiative continues to evolve to address new road safety issues, with new
programs and enhanced partnerships. While some programs resonate well with residents, some
are of little interest and fall into dis-use.
Program initiatives that have succeeded include;
- Safer School Travel
- Integrated Corridor Project
- Three Strikes Campaign
- Weekly Partner Reporting
The importance of concentrating limited resources on those programs and initiatives that perform
well is unquestioned. We also spend some staff resource time looking for new ideas in use in
other communities across western Canada, this dedication to looking for and leaning about new
safety programs will ensure a strong Safer City Program going forward.